In the end, God brought about another unexpected event that allowed me to remain in my program. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! The mature Augustine, richly educated in all the great writings available to him, knew from personal experience that only through Christ could he learn the way of wisdom, humility, and love. It is true that other defects have to be feared in our sins, but pride is to be feared in our very acts of virtue; otherwise, those praiseworthy acts will be lost through the desire of praise itself. Thus, Augustine’s words became very real to me in everyday life and tested my obedience—was I willing to humble myself before Christ even when I didn’t like what that meant, and when I didn’t know why I had to do it in this way? Having power or success in this world is not evil in itself. Before his conversion, he believed that the ideal life was marked by power, success, knowledge, control, leisure, and external morality. Augustine – Humility, Humility, Humility 5 Jul To [Jesus], my dear Dioscorus, I wish you to submit with complete devotion, and to construct no other way for yourself of grasping and holding the truth than the way constructed by Him who, as God, saw how faltering were our steps. (Confessions 8, 12, 29) It was not a conversion moment that happened in a dialogue with the Bishop Ambrose, but through the unintended singing of an unseen child who was unaware of the impact being made. The heart can transform itself through love, and the mind can open to the workings of the grace of God. In writing his Confessions, his humility is evident in his not adding into details that would take the focus of his reader away from God, to whom he is writing. The goal is to get the best house, the best job, and the best family. There was the ancient subliminal subtext in pagan literature, ‘Better never to have been born.’ Humility therefore consisted in the acknowledgment of the wretchedness of the human condition. And only a person with humility could accept this truth. In light of this profound personal experience, Augustine taught that humility was central to the Christian life. ( Log Out /  When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they usurped this prerogative (Genesis 2). This tight control of the text even went so far as to not satisfy curiosity by mentioning the names of his only sister, his childhood friend who died suddenly in early adulthood, and his concubine of seventeen years (who also was the mother of their son, Adeodatus. According to Christ, humility is the best way to live. As I got older, these games turned into real daydreams about getting married, setting up my own house, driving my favorite car, and enjoying all the perks of adulthood. For Augustine, humility was far more than simply one of many virtues that a Christian should practice. Wilfrid Parsons, vol. Christ was not only the pre-eminent example of humility, but through his humility he provided salvation to human beings. This way is first humility, second humility, third humility, and however often you should ask me I would say the same, not because there are not other precepts to be explained, but, if humility does not precede and accompany and follow every good work we do, and if it is not set before us to look upon, and beside us to lean upon, and behind us to fence us in, pride will wrest from our hand any good deed we do while we are in the very act of taking pleasure in it. (Confessions 3, 5, 9) Augustine would have encountered the earlier (pagan) notion of humility during his Classical education. Augustine understands that if we presume through pride to make ourselves the centre of our own identities, the result is a weakened view of self that is pretentious and reckless. The next time you think about being the best you, write out yearly goals, or daydream about your ideal life, remember what Augustine said. The Gospel Coalition Canada helps people know God's Word with their mind, love God fully with their heart, and engage the world with grace and truth. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. How Long Does It Really Take to Read the Bible? The Works of Augustine on Logos Bible Software. ( Log Out /  She is currently working on a PhD at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Kansas City, MO), blogs at jennylynsandra.wordpress.com and historicaltheology.org, and is married to JD who serves as Associate Pastor at Richmond Alliance Church. Copyright © 2020 The Gospel Coalition, INC. All Rights Reserved, Jenny-Lyn de Klerk is the Puritan Project Assistant at Regent College in Vancouver (follow her on Instagram, ) and an Assistant Editor for Books at a Glance. To Augustine, one reaches the ideal life to the extent that one practices humility as the highest form of self-development. For Augustine, humility was far more than simply one of many virtues that a Christian should practice. She is currently working on a PhD at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Kansas City, MO), blogs at. Register now for our 2020 online conference! Did you ever play “The Game of Life” or MASH as a kid? Augustine argued that Jesus is the supreme example of humility: he not only condescended to be born as a human being, but he also died a gruesome death for finite and sinful people. In replying in writing to an intelligent young man named Dioscorus, Augustine felt his patience being tested. In his spiritual autobiography The Confessions, Augustine often reflected on how his moments of greatest pain and sorrow were when he relied on himself, and his moments of greatest comfort and joy were when he experienced God’s humbling grace in his life. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. After his conversion, he believed that the ideal life was marked by humility. He emphatically declared, "This way is first humility, second humility, third humility and no matter how often you keep asking me I will say the same over and over again." Jenny-Lyn de Klerk is the Puritan Project Assistant at Regent College in Vancouver (follow her on Instagram @puritanjenny) and an Assistant Editor for Books at a Glance. If you don’t want to take it from him or me, take it from Christ, who, in response to the question “who is the best?” said the person who “humbles himself” (Matt. Rather than ascending to an ideal existence through power, knowledge, and morality, one lives an ideal existence by falling before Christ, the true ideal Person, who humbled himself in death on a cross. Thus, when I came across Augustine’s story, I was captivated by his own search for the ideal life. Letters (83-130), ed. He saw that genuine truth was a realisation of the weakness of humanity and the generous grace freely offered us by God. 18, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 282. Work includes not only our day job but encompasses every moment of our life. Roy Joseph Deferrari, trans. Christ himself said in Matthew 11:28-29 that people should learn from him because of his meekness and humility, not because of the impressive miracles he performed. What in the World Is Going on with the CBOQ. In his preaching, Augustine used a popular phrase of the day, Christus medicus ("Christ the medical doctor", "Christ the physician"). ( Log Out /  Sometimes my sister and I wouldn’t even roll the die to see what we got, we’d just play “choose your favourite life”! We need to return to the humility which recognises that it is the love and providence of God for us – and the plan of God for us – that best sustains us. Through the experience of his spiritual searching during his own first thirty years of life, he came to see clearly that only a person with humility can follow Christ. The details of these dreams changed after I became a Christian, but I kept dreaming about my ideal life. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. All rights reserved. Augustine repeatedly accused humanity of being full of sinful pride and in need of receiving salvation through Christ’s humility. I had to embrace humility and tell myself, “my life will not be meaningless if I do not get a PhD” and “I will not idolize vocation or misconstrue it,” even though everything in me wanted to fight for my right to do this degree. For example, his search for the Christian faith in Carthage at age eighteen moved into Manicheaneism because he was too proud to accept that Truth could reside in the bad Latin translation and the unpolished non-Classical vocabulary of the Scripture text he took up and read. Indeed, he admits that the path he learned from the various philosophers was incapable of teaching him the wisdom of Christ. It is significant that Augustine saw his moment of moral conversion in the garden at Milan as being prompted by a little child (he professed unawareness of the gender of the child, or even of the ditty the child was singing). From the Biblical point of view, the pagan devaluation of human life is not humble at all, but arrogant. In a letter to a student, he wrote “I wish you to prepare for yourself no other way of seizing and holding the truth than that which has been prepared by [God]…in that way the first part is humility; the second, humility; the third, humility.” According to Augustine, humility is 1) exhibited primarily in Christ’s death on the cross, 2) Christ’s remedy for the sickness of sin, and 3) leads to the happy life. He understood that even as Christ entered the world "in the form of a Servant," it is only through servanthood that we, too, attain whatever understanding is meant to be grasped by humanity within the plan of God. ( Log Out /  In consequence, we do more harm than good. He often referred to pride as a physical infirmity or “swelling” that could only be healed through Christ’s “remedy,” “cure,” or “medicine” of humility. I’m very happy about this, but it has also brought on even more external pressures, and I’m certain that the real reason I feel happier now than I did several months ago is because I’ve rejected the sinful, internal pressure I felt from my Roman (and Western) ideal of perfection and success. ), 5 Surprising Things That the Bible Says about Marriage, How Recent Restrictions Have Affected Churches in Québec. To [Jesus], my dear Dioscorus, I wish you to submit with complete devotion, and to construct no other way for yourself of grasping and holding the truth than the way constructed by Him who, as God, saw how faltering were our steps.

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